For a moment, a very brief moment, she had actually thought she might have been mistaken about how unfeeling he had been in the past. She obviously wasn’t; Liam’s feelings of jealousy were just as selfish as all his other emotions had always been!
She gave a humourless smile. ‘I did try to warn you that this was a mistake, Liam,’ she said. ‘We have nothing in common now—if we ever did. Old friends meeting in this way—’
‘Old lovers!’ he corrected harshly, blue eyes alight with emotion. ‘Don’t try to totally negate our past together, Laura.’
She felt frozen to the spot, actually able to feel the colour drain from her cheeks. Negate their past? She would like to wipe it from her memory bank altogether!
Lovers… Yes, they had been lovers. But she had been determined, these last eight years, never to think of that again. She didn’t want to think about it!
‘Please sit down, Laura,’ Liam encouraged quietly. ‘I promise I’ll try not to be insulting again.’
‘You’ll try, Liam?’ she repeated dryly, giving a shake of her head at his arrogance. ‘You’ll have to do better than that if you expect me to stay!’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘You have to accept sometimes I can be insulting without meaning to be.’
Laura gave a pained wince. ‘And that’s the best excuse you can give for some of the things you’ve already said to me?’
‘Without actually lying—yes!’
She sat down abruptly. ‘You really are the most arrogant man I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet!’
He grinned, leaning forward to replenish their champagne glasses. ‘Well, at least I have that distinction—the most arrogant man you’ve ever met.’
‘Arrogance is not a virtue, Liam.’
‘I’ll try to remember that,’ he said wryly. ‘Now, let’s drink a toast…’ He held her full glass of champagne out to her before picking up his own glass.
He had hinted on the telephone that he had something to celebrate, and Laura had wondered if he might mean the prospect of publication for his new book. If it should turn out that was what it was, what was she going to do? To carry on pleading ignorance would be deceptive in the extreme. But to tell him the truth, after his bluntness already this evening, would be even more unacceptable…
She swallowed hard. ‘A toast to what?’
‘Old lovers and new friends?’ he suggested.
She gave the ghost of a smile, relieved the toast hadn’t been what she had expected—although the alternative hadn’t been much better! ‘The first I choose to forget—the second isn’t very likely,’ she told him honestly.
‘Let’s drink to us anyway,’ he encouraged huskily.
‘To ‘us’…?
‘Did you tell him about us?’ Liam asked slowly, once the toast had been drunk.
She stiffened. ‘Robert, you mean?’ she said delaying.
‘Of course I mean Robert,’ he confirmed laughingly. ‘Unless you’ve had any other husbands the last eight years? Just out of interest,’ he continued lightly, ‘how long ago did you marry him?’
‘Robert and I were married seven and a half years ago,’ she answered flatly.
‘No time for any other husbands.’ Liam answered his own question. ‘And only a few months after I left for California,’ he added pointedly.
‘Nowhere near as hasty as your own marriage,’ Laura returned harshly. ‘You had barely arrived on the tarmac at Los Angeles airport before your own engagement, and subsequent marriage took place!’
She could still remember her feelings of absolute desolation when she had seen the speculation in the newspapers concerning his relationship with Diana Porter. That desolation had been complete when the photographs of his wedding had appeared a few weeks later. If it hadn’t been for Robert—
‘It looks as if neither of us were too heartbroken at our separation,’ Liam acknowledged. ‘I suppose your beloved uncle approves of Robert too?’
Laura’s movements were deliberate and calm as she placed her champagne glass back down on the low table in front of her. They had to be; her hand was shaking so much she was in danger of spilling the bubbly wine.
Her parents had been killed in a car crash when she was only sixteen, leaving her without any close family to speak of. It had been left to her godfather, her honorary ‘uncle’ and guardian, also the executor of her parents’ will, to organise the continued payment of her boarding-school fees, so enabling her to stay on at school and sit her ‘A’ levels before going on to university.
Obviously when she’d met Liam, eight and a half a years ago she had told him about her beloved godfather in the course of their own relationship. But the two men had never met.
Obviously her godfather had expressed curiosity about this worldly-wise man in her life, and she had suggested to Liam several times that perhaps the two men should meet. It had been a suggestion he had chosen to ignore.
And the reason for his reticence had become obvious once he had gone to America and married someone else within a few months: the complication of meeting the guardian of the young student whom he had only been casually involved with for six months previously had not entered into any of his plans! That would have made everything just a little too serious—and Liam hadn’t ever had any serious intentions where Laura was concerned!
She looked at him coldly now. ‘I don’t happen to think of any of this—any part of my life now, in fact—is your business, Liam,’ she told him icily. ‘Just as I have no interest in your personal life now,’ she concluded contemptuously.
Liam looked completely unperturbed by her coldness. ‘How about my professional one?’ he teased. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know what—?’
‘No!’ she sharply cut him off before he could say something that might put her in a compromising position. Telling her that Shipley Publishing was interested in publishing his latest novel would certainly do that! ‘No, Liam, I don’t want to know anything about your professional life either.’ She spoke more calmly. ‘In fact—’ she gave a glance at her wristwatch ‘—I really should be going now.’
‘Cinderella turns into a pumpkin at the stroke of eleven?’ Liam suggested.
She smiled, shaking her head. ‘You obviously don’t know your fairy-tales very well, Liam. Cinderella turned back into a ragged drudge. But not until midnight.’
He shrugged. ‘Put my ignorance down to my deprived childhood. My mother didn’t have the time to read me fairy-tales; she was too busy going out to work to keep my three sisters and myself after my father died.’
He made the remark without any show of bitterness in his tone, and yet Laura knew that it couldn’t have been easy for the four children, nor their mother. Their father had been killed when Liam, the eldest child, was only seven. She couldn’t imagine how Mary O’Reilly had managed during those years at all. The fact that Liam had become a successful writer by the time he was in his mid-twenties had helped all his family financially. But it couldn’t take away the struggle of the children’s early years.
But she didn’t want to think about the hardships of Liam’s fatherless childhood. The last thing she wanted was to see Liam in any sort of vulnerable light!
‘Are your mother and sisters all well?’ she felt compelled to enquire politely.
He smiled at the thought of his family. ‘Very much so. Mama lives very comfortably in a lovely cottage on the west coast of Ireland, and all three of my sisters are happily married with children of their own. Fourteen between them, at the last count.’
Laura smiled. ‘Your mother must love that.’
He grimaced. ‘My mother won’t be completely happy until I’ve provided her with a male grandchild to carry on the family name.’
Laura raised dark brows. ‘Surely there must be lots of O’Reillys in Ireland?’
‘To be sure there are,’ Liam answered with a deliberate Irish lilt to his voice. ‘But there aren’t any other male members of this particular O’Reilly branch,’ he explained ruefully.
